Accidents, Insurance & Police

[Kristie]

Jaimie, I totally know how you feel. When we were rear-ended July 4th, the police didn't even put Faith on the acciden report, even though she's the one the officer talked to (I was being swarmed by paramedics - you'd think I was in labor or something - hee hee!) It was a huge ordeal to get that taken care of. I had even asked about the officer coming by the house to change it since
a. it happened at the end of the street
b. I had just had a baby, and
3. I had no car, cause a lady crashed into my stopped car.
But Helena & Gadsden must have taken the same helpfulness class, because I was told that since I lived in Alabaster, not Helena, the officer couldn't come by. Even though it was 2 blocks from the accident site.

We're still dealing with the insurance crap. I think Faith is, too. You'd think since we had the same insurance it should be easy. But no, they don't want to help us at all. I think it's worse when the insurance is the same, because who are they going to argue with? Themselves? And our agent has been no help at all, because he doesn't handle that. We have to talk to the claims agent, who is somewhere (NY, Alaska, France?) and half the time we get his voice mail. I finally just gave it all to Zach to handle. I'm done. And he's about done with that insurance company, because if they can't help their own clients, what good are they?

[Laura]

We have to talk to the claims agent, who is somewhere (NY, Alaska, France?)

Hee!

I remember when that oldster hit and killed my Sentra. We both had Alfa and the stuff they had to pay for was my car and my trips to the chiropractor. They ended up filing the car on hers and the doc on mine.

What's crazy is all I wanted was for them to fix my precious car. It was sad to me because she didn't look broken. The bad damage was the front axel, so you couldn't even see it but the car was kaput. (Though I swear I have seen it out and about in Gadsden in the years since.)

The car wasn't worth much, say $2500 and was going to cost $3000 to fix. (Made up numbers because this was 2001.) They gave me the money the car was worth, I emptied the savings I had and bought the Corolla.

Months later, like MONTHS, I get a call from Alfa saying "am I ready to settle up?" And I'm all like "I thought we did. You gave me money for the car, you paid for my trips to chiropractor..."

But it turns out that until I switched my chiro visits over to my health insurance, the car sitch wasn't really resolved. And so when it made it to Alfa through who knows what channels that I was no longer visiting the doc because of the accident, they called me up to settle.

AND GAVE ME $5,000.

I still don't understand why.

I put it toward the 'plexes.

[pickle]

holy shit! i hope i win the Crazy Random Insurance Sweepstakes too!

[Kristie]

Another adjuster is coming to look at the car Wednesday. Hopefully it will be good news.

When I got rear-ended by the drunk driver when I first started working at Rococo (a thousand years ago!) I had to go to the chiropractor a bunch. But Robby Elrod was our adjuster (we all had ALFA, though the drunk didn't own the car, or the house he lived at or anything. At least he was on the insurance!) so it was super-easy-peasy. And we got some extra money, too, Laura (they call it 'pain & suffering' or 'general damages') Though if you're with Liberty Mutt, and you've been rear-ended while 9 months pregnant, 4 days from your due date, you get next to nothing. Go figure.